King Faisal University

College of Arts

Department of English Language

Modern Novel
Prepared by
Dr. Asmaa Mansour
Introduction

What is literature?

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates

systematically from everyday speech. It is a particular organization
of language. It has its own specific laws, structures, and devices.

Many of the most valuable things we know come from the

literature we have read. If we read well, we find ourselves in a
conversational relationship with the most creative minds of our own
time and of the past. Re-reading Emma, or a Dickens novel, in middle
age, we are surprised and delighted to find much more in it than
when we read it at school. A great work of literature continues giving
at whatever point in life you read it.

Re-reading is one of the great pleasures that literature offers us.

The great works of literature are inexhaustible – that is one of the
things that makes them great. However often you go back to them,
they will always have something new to offer.

Is there a correct view of what a text is about?

No, there is not, and it is this fact that makes the study of
literature both difficult and fascinating; the text is a source of endless
speculation, argument and debate. When students start to study
literature it is very often the case that a teacher or lecturer provides
them with a very clear guide to the meaning and method of a text. A

moment's thought, however, will lead you to realize that this is just
one person's analysis. To this extent it might appear that all criticism
is purely subjective.
 Elements of fiction

1- Plot
It is the sequence of events in a story and their relation to one
another as they develop and usually resolve a conflict.

The Plot’s Structure

It is the way in which the story elements are arranged. Writers

vary structure depending on the effect the writer desires. For
example, in a mystery, the author will withhold plot exposition until
later in the story. In William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” it is only
at the end of the story that we learn what Miss Emily has been up to
all those years while locked away in her Southern mansion. Another
writer, looking to create a different response, might narrate the
events in sequence. The basic elements are more or less the same, but
how they are used, or plotted, makes a tremendous difference
What Goes into a Plot?

Narrative tradition calls for developing stories with particular pieces-

plot elements- in place.

a- Exposition
It exposes the reader to important information. It is most often at the
beginning of the novel or short story. It lets the reader know about
the setting of the story as well as the characters.

1- Setting
The place(s) and time(s) of the story, including the historical period,
social milieu of the characters, geographical location.

2- Initial incident

It is the point in the story at which the main conflict is revealed. This
may be an actual incident which causes the conflict, or it may simply
be the point in the story when the narrator reveals to the reader a
conflict which has been going on for some time before the beginning
of the story.

3-Conflict
conflict is the struggle between the antagonist and the protagonist.
The protagonist is the main character who is attempting to achieve
some kind of goal (ex. To be happy, to survive, to find the murderer,
etc.). The antagonist is the character or force which is continually
stopping the protagonist from achieving this goal.

There are three types of conflict:

1-Man vs. man- external struggle

Between two or more individuals.
2- Man vs. himself- internal struggle
Concerning emotion and decision.
3- Man vs. nature ( environment/ society) -external struggle

B- The Rising Action

It is the dramatization of events that complicate the situation and

gradually intensify the conflict. Then the narration proceeds to a
further development of the rising action, which takes the reader to
the climax of the plot or turning point of the story, its emotional high
point. Now begins the fourth stage of the narration, called the falling
action, where the problem or conflict proceeds toward resolution.

C- Resolution

After the climax comes the resolution, also known as the falling
action, which shows the consequences. The resolution answers the
inevitable question “ what finally happened?”
2- Characters

• They are the persons who appear in the story; they may
perform actions, speak to other characters, be described by
the narrator, or be remembered by other characters.

• Characters to notice in a story are the story’s Narrator, the

main character or protagonist, the antagonist, and
sometimes minor characters.

• A person in a short story or novel is called a Character.

The person around whom the conflict revolves is called the Main
Character

• The hero of the story who is faced with a conflict is the

protagonist while the villain of the story , the person who
causes the conflict is the Antagonist.

• A motive is the reason behind an individual’s action.

• A conversation between two or more people in the story is

called a Dialogue.

• Antagonist is the person with whom the main character

has the most conflict.

• Minor character is a person whose role in the story is not

very important.
3-Point of view

Point of view answers the question: whose voice tells the story or
gives us the crucial information we need to understand about what is
happening?

Types of points of view:

• Objective point of view:

With the objective point of view, the writer tells what happens
without stating more than can be inferred from the story’s action and
dialogue. The narrator never discloses anything about what the
characters think or feel, remaining a detached observer.

• Third person point of view:

Here the narrator does not participate in the action of the story as
one of the characters, but lets us know exactly how the characters
feel. We learn about the characters through this outside voice.

• First person point of view:

In the first person point of view, the narrator does participate in the
action of the story. When reading stories in the first person , we need
to realize that what the narrator is recounting might not be the
objective truth. We should question the trustworthiness of the
accounting.

• Omniscient and limited omniscient points of view:

A narrator who knows everything about all the characters, and can
tell what any or all characters are thinking and feeling ; he is all
knowing , or omniscient. Remember that he is not a character in the
story.
A narrator whose knowledge is limited to one character, either major
or minor, has a limited omniscient point of view.

4- Setting
• A setting is the place(s) and time(s) of the story, including
historical period, social milieu of the characters,
geographical location, descriptions of the indoor and
outdoor locales, etc.
5- Theme

The main idea or basic meaning of literary work (short story

or a novel) is called the theme. In fiction, the theme is not
intended to teach or preach. In fact, it is not presented directly
at all. In other words, you must figure out the theme yourself.

Frequently, a short story or a novel may have more than one

controlling idea.

Finding the theme

Here are some ways to uncover the theme in a story

Check out the title. Sometimes it tells you a lot about the theme.

Notice symbols (an idea, belief, or value is called a symbol).

Sometimes these lead you to the theme.

What allusions are made throughout the story?

What are the details and particulars in the story? What greater
meaning may they have?
 Introduction

In Lord of the Flies, British schoolboys are stranded on a tropical

island. In an attempt to recreate the culture they left behind, they
elect Ralph to lead, with the intellectual Piggy as counselor.
But Jack wants to lead, too, and one-by-one, he lures the boys from
civility and reason to the savage survivalism of primeval hunters.
In Lord of the Flies, William Golding gives us a glimpse of the
savagery that underlies even the most civilized human beings.

Written by: William Golding

Type of Work: novel

Genres: allegorical fiction

First Published: 1954

Setting: Deserted tropical island

Main Characters: Ralph; Jack; Piggy; Simon; Samneric; Roger

Major Symbols: Piggy's glasses; the beast; fire; conch shell; Lord of
the Flies

Movie Versions: Lord of the Flies (1963); Lord of the Flies (1990)

The three most important aspects of Lord of the Flies:

• The major theme of Lord of the Flies is that humans are

essentially barbaric if not downright evil. The stranded boys
begin by establishing a society similar to the one they left
behind in England, but soon their society has degenerated into
rival clans ruled by fear and violence; before the book is over,
three boys have been killed.
• The novel is an allegory, which is a story in which characters,
settings, and events stand for things larger than themselves.
 For example, the island represents the world; Ralph and Jack
symbolize different approaches to leadership.
• William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies following World War
II, during which the Nazis exterminated six million
Jews and the United States dropped two atomic bombs on
Japan. In this context, the novel's profound pessimism is
understandable.
Plot Overview

In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of

schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island.
Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the
beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the
other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and
devising a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and
Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who
will hunt food for the entire group.

Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to

explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must
light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing ships. The boys
succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the
lenses of Piggy’s eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to
playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the
forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of
the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having
burned to death.

At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend
much of their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph,
however, complains that they should be maintaining the signal fire
and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to
catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly
preoccupied with the act of hunting.

When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy
notice, to their horror, that the signal fire—which had been the
hunters’ responsibility to maintain—has burned out. Furious, Ralph
accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and
all the hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the
chase in a kind of wild dance. Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy
across the face. Ralph blows the conch shell and reprimands the boys
in a speech intended to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly
becomes clear that some of the boys have started to become afraid.
The littlest boys, known as “littluns,” have been troubled by
nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now believe
that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The
older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think
rationally, asking where such a monster could possibly hide during
the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea—a
proposition that terrifies the entire group.

Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle
high above the island. The boys, asleep below, do not notice the
flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A parachutist drifts to
earth on the signal-fire mountain, dead. Sam and Eric, the twins
responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see
the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the enormous
silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it
makes. Thinking the island beast is at hand, they rush back to the
camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them.

The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster.

Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the
mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a distance
and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a
meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack
says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be removed from
office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack
angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him.
Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time
on the beach rather than on the mountain. They obey, but before
they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join
Jack.

Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and
organizes a hunt and a violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize
the occasion. The hunters then decapitate the sow and place its head
on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Later,
encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible
vision, during which it seems to him that the head is speaking. The
voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the Flies, says
that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon
faints. When he wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees the
dead parachutist. Understanding then that the beast does not exist
externally but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the
beach to tell the others what he has seen. But the others are in the
midst of a chaotic revelry—even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack’s
feast—and when they see Simon’s shadowy figure emerge from the
jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and
teeth.

The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have
done. Jack’s hunters attack them and their few followers and steal
Piggy’s glasses in the process. Ralph’s group travels to Jack’s
stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders
Sam and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle,
one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy and
shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent
of spears.

Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while
the others hunt him like an animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the
forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding place. Ralph stays in
the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sow’s head, but
eventually, he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other
boys will soon arrive to kill him. Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but
when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer standing over him.
The officer’s ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle. The other boys
reach the beach and stop in their tracks at the sight of the officer.
Amazed at the spectacle of this group of bloodthirsty, savage
children, the officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is overwhelmed by
the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened
on the island, he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as well.
The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their
composure.
Themes
Civilization vs. Savagery

• The overarching theme of Lord of the Flies is the conflict

between the human impulse towards savagery and the rules of
civilization .Throughout the novel, the conflict is dramatized by
the clash between Ralph and Jack, who respectively represent
civilization and savagery. The differing ideologies are
expressed by each boy's distinct attitudes towards authority.
While Ralph uses his authority to establish rules, protect the
good of the group, and enforce the moral and ethical codes of
the English society the boys were raised in, Jack is interested in
gaining power over the other boys. When Jack assumes
leadership of his own tribe, he demands the complete
subservience of the other boys, who not only serve him but
worship him as an idol.

The rift between civilization and savagery is also

communicated through the novel's major symbols: the conch
shell, which is associated with Ralph, and The Lord of the Flies,
which is associated with Jack. The conch shell is a powerful
marker of democratic order on the island, confirming both
Ralph's leadership-determined by election-and the power of
assembly among the boys. Yet, as the conflict between Ralph
and Jack deepens, the conch shell loses symbolic importance.
Jack declares that the conch is meaningless as a symbol of
authority and order, and its decline in importance signals the
decline of civilization on the island. At the same time, The Lord
of the Flies, which is an offering to the mythical "beast" on the
island, is increasingly invested with significance as a symbol of
the dominance of savagery on the island, and of Jack's
authority over the other boys. The Lord of the Flies represents
the unification of the boys under Jack's rule as motivated by
fear of "outsiders": the beast and those who refuse to accept
Jack's authority. The destruction of the conch shell at the scene
 of Piggy's murder signifies the complete eradication of
civilization on the island. By the final scene, savagery has
completely displaced civilization as the prevailing system on
the island.

• Individualism vs. Community

One of the key concerns of Lord of the Flies is the role of the
individual in society. Many of the problems on the island-the
extinguishing of the signal fire, the lack of shelters, the mass
abandonment of Ralph's camp, and the murder of Piggy-stem
from the boys' implicit commitment to a principle of self-
interest over the principle of community. That is, the boys
would rather fulfill their individual desires than cooperate as a
coherent society, which would require that each one act for the
good of the group. Accordingly, the principles of individualism
and community are symbolized by Jack and Ralph,
respectively. Jack wants to "have fun" on the island and satisfy
his bloodlust, while Ralph wants to secure the group's rescue, a
goal they can achieve only by cooperating.

The boys' self-interestedness culminates, of course, when

they decide to join Jack's tribe, a society without communal
values whose appeal is that Jack will offer them total freedom.
The popularity of his tribe reflects the enormous appeal of a
society based on individual freedom and self-interest, but as the
reader soon learns, the freedom Jack offers his tribe is illusory.
Jack implements punitive and irrational rules and restricts his
boys' behavior far more than Ralph did. Golding thus suggests
not only that some level of communal system is superior to one
based on pure self-interest, but also that pure individual
freedom is an impossible value to sustain within a group
dynamic, which will always tend towards societal organization.
• The Nature of Evil

Is evil innate within the human spirit, or is it an influence

from an external source? What role do societal rules and
institutions play in the existence of human evil? Does the
capacity for evil vary from person to person, or does it depend
on the circumstances each individual faces? These questions
are at the heart of Lord of the Flies which.

It is important to note that Golding's novel rejects

supernatural or religious accounts of the origin of human evil.
While the boys fear the "beast" as an embodiment of evil
similar to the Christian concept of Satan, the novel emphasizes
that this interpretation is not only mistaken but also, ironically,
the motivation for the boys' increasingly cruel and violent
behavior. It is their irrational fear of the beast that informs the
boys' paranoia and leads to the fatal schism between Jack and
Ralph and their respective followers, and this is what prevents
them from recognizing and addressing their responsibility for
their own impulses. Rather, as The Lord of the Flies
communicates to Simon in the forest glade, the "beast" is an
internal force, present in every individual, and is thus
incapable of being truly defeated. That the most ethical
characters on the island-Simon and Ralph-each come to
recognize his own capacity for evil indicates the novel's
emphasis on evil's universality among humans.

Even so, the novel is not entirely pessimistic about the

human capacity for good. While evil impulses may lurk in
every human psyche, the intensity of these impulses-and the
ability to control them-appear to vary from individual to
individual. We may note that the characters who struggle most
successfully against their evil instincts do so by appealing to
ethical or social codes of behavior. For example, Ralph and
Piggy demand the return of Piggy's glasses because it is the
 "right thing to do." Golding suggests that while evil may be
present in us all, it can be successfully suppressed.

Loss of Innocence

As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly

children longing for rescue to cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have
no desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of
innocence that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. The
painted savages in Chapter 12 who have hunted, tortured, and killed
animals and human beings are a far cry from the guileless children
swimming in the lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray
this loss of innocence as something that is done to the children;
rather, it results naturally from their increasing openness to the
innate evil and savagery that has always existed within them. Golding
implies that civilization can mitigate but never wipe out the innate
evil that exists within all human beings. The forest glade in which
Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of innocence. At first, it is
a place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in
the novel, he discovers the bloody sow’s head impaled upon a stake in
the middle of the clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has
disrupted the paradise that existed before—a powerful symbol of
innate human evil disrupting childhood innocence.
History of Lord of the Flies

Golding wrote Lord of the Flies in 1954, less than a decade after
World War II, when the world was in the midst of the Cold War. The
atrocities of the Holocaust, the horrific effects of the atomic bomb,
and the ominous threat of the Communist demon behind the Iron
Curtain were all present in the minds of the western public and the
author. This environment of fear combined with technology's rapid
advances act as a backdrop to the island experiences: the shot-down
plane, for example, and the boys' concern that the "Reds" might find
them before the British do.

Historically, in times of widespread socio-economic distress, the

general public feels itself vulnerable and turns to the leader who
exhibits the most strength or seems to offer the most protection.
In Lord of the Flies, Jack and the hunters, who offer the luxury of
meat and the comforts of a dictatorship, fill that role. In exchange for
his protection, the other boys sacrifice any moral reservations they
may have about his policies and enthusiastically persecute the boys
who resist joining their tribe.

Character Analysis

Ralph
Ralph represents leadership, the properly socialized and civilized
young man. He is attractive, charismatic, and decently intelligent. He
demonstrates obvious common sense. Ralph is the one who conceives
the meeting place, the fire, and the huts. He synthesizes and
applies Piggy's intellectualism, and he recognizes the false fears and
superstitions as barriers to their survival.

Ralph's capacity for leadership is evident from the very beginning

(he is the only elected leader of the boys). During the crisis caused by
the sight of the dead paratrooper on the mountain, Ralph is able to
proceed with both sense and caution. He works vigilantly to keep the
group's focus on the hope for rescue. When the time comes to
investigate the castle rock, Ralph takes the lead alone, despite his fear
of the so-called beast. Even in this tense moment, politeness is his
default. When Simon mumbles that he doesn't believe in the beast,
Ralph "answered him politely, as if agreeing about the weather."

Having started with a schoolboy's romantic attitude toward

anticipated "adventures" on the island, Ralph eventually loses his
excitement about their independence and longs for the comfort of the
familiar. He indulges in images of home, recollections of the peaceful
life of cereal and cream and children's books he had once known. He
fantasizes about bathing and grooming. Ralph's earlier life had been
civilized, and he brought to the island innocent expectations and
confidence until certain experiences informed his naiveté and
destroyed his innocence. As he gains experience with the assemblies,
the forum for civilized discourse, he loses faith in them. "Don't we
love meetings?" Ralph says bitterly, frustrated that only a few of the
boys actually follow through on their plans.

Although he becomes worn down by the hardships and fears of

primitive life and is gradually infected by the savagery of the other
boys, Ralph is the only character who identifies Simon's death as
murder and has a realistic, unvarnished view of his participation.

When Ralph encounters the officer on the beach at the end of the
book, he is not relieved at being rescued from a certain grisly death
but discomforted over "his filthy appearance," an indication that his
civility had endured his ordeal. In exchange for his innocence, he has
gained an understanding of humankind's natural character, an
understanding not heretofore available to him: that evil is universally
present in all people and requires a constant resistance.
Jack
Jack represents evil and violence, the dark side of human nature.
A former choirmaster and "head boy" at his school, he arrived on
the island having experienced some success in exerting control over
others by dominating the choir with his militaristic attitude. He is
eager to make rules and punish those who break them, although he
consistently breaks them himself when he needs to further his own
interests. His main interest is hunting, an endeavor that begins with
the desire for meat and builds to the overwhelming urge to master
and kill other living creatures. Hunting develops the savagery that
already ran close to his surface, making him "ape-like" as he prowls
through the jungle. His domain is the emotions, which rule and fuel
his animal nature.

The conflict on the island begins with Jack attempting to dominate

the group rather than working with Ralph to benefit it. He
frequently impugns the power of the conch, declaring that the conch
rule does not matter on certain parts of the island. Yet he uses the
conch to his advantage when possible, such as when he calls his own
assembly to impeach Ralph. For him, the conch represents the rules
and boundaries that have kept him from acting on the impulses to
dominate others. Their entire lives in the other world, the boys had
been moderated by rules set by society against physical aggression.
On the island, however, that social conditioning fades rapidly from
Jack's character. He quickly loses interest in that world of politeness
and boundaries.

Given the thrill of "irresponsible authority" he's experienced on

the island, Jack's return to civilization is conflicted. When the naval
officer asks who is in charge, Jack starts to step forward to challenge
Ralph's claim of leadership but is stopped perhaps by the recognition
that now the old rules will be enforced.
Piggy

Piggy is the intellectual with poor eyesight, a weight problem, and

asthma. He is the most physically vulnerable of all the boys, despite
his greater intelligence. Piggy represents the rational world. By
frequently quoting his aunt, he also provides the only female voice.

Piggy's intellect benefits the group only through Ralph; he acts as

Ralph's advisor. He cannot be the leader himself because he lacks
leadership qualities and has no rapport with the other boys. Piggy
also relies too heavily on the power of social convention. He believes
that holding the conch gives him the right to be heard. He believes
that upholding social conventions get results.

As the brainy representative of civilization, Piggy asserts that "Life

. . . is scientific." Piggy complains, "What good're your doing talking
like that?" when Ralph brings up the highly charged issue of Simon's
death at their hands. Piggy tries to keep life scientific despite the
incident, "searching for a formula" to explain the death. He asserts
that the assault on Simon was justifiable because Simon asked for it
by inexplicably crawling out of the forest into the ring.

Piggy is so intent on preserving some remnant of civilization on

the island that he assumes improbably enough that Jack's raiders
have attacked Ralph's group so that they can get the conch when of
course they have come for fire. Even up to the moment of his death,
Piggy's perspective does not shift in response to the reality of their
situation. He can't think as others think or value what they value.
Because his eminently intellectual approach to life is modeled on the
attitudes and rules of the authoritative adult world, he thinks
everyone should share his values and attitudes as a matter of course.
Speaking of the deaths of Simon and the littlun with the birthmark,
he asks "What's grownups goin' to think?" as if he is not so much
mourning the boys' deaths as he is mourning the loss of values,
ethics, discipline, and decorum that caused those deaths.
Simon
Simon's role as an artistic, religious visionary is established not
only by his hidden place of meditation but also by the description of
his eyes: "so bright they had deceived Ralph into thinking him
delightfully gay and wicked." While Piggy has the glasses — one
symbol of vision and truth — Simon has bright eyes, a symbol of
another kind of vision and truth.

Simon is different from the other boys not only due to his physical
frailty, manifested in his fainting spells, but also in his consistently
expressed concern for the more vulnerable boys. Littluns follow him,
and he picks choice fruit for them from spots they can't reach, a
saintly or Christ-like image. He stands up for Piggy and helps him
get his glasses back when Jack knocks them off his head, another
allusion to Simon's visionary bent. In addition, he has a secret place
in the jungle, where he spends time alone.

Simon's loner tendencies make the other boys think he's odd, but,
for the reader, Simon's credibility as a mystic is established when he
prophesies to Ralph "You'll get back to where you came from."
Simon reaches an abstract understanding of mankind's latent evil
nature and unthinking urge to dominate as "mankind's essential
illness." When Simon tries to visualize what the beast might look like,
"there arose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once
heroic and sick" — Golding's vision of humanity as flawed by
inherent depravity.

In contrast to Piggy and Ralph's equating adulthood with

knowledge and higher understanding, Simon sees the darker side of
knowledge. For him, the staked sow's eyes are "dim with the infinite
cynicism of adult life," a view of adults not defined by the civilized
politeness and capability the boys imagine. Yet Simon soldiers on in
his quest to discover the identity of the beast on the mountaintop
because he sees the need for the boys to face their fears, to
understand the true identity of the false beast on the mountain, and
to get on with the business of facing the beast within themselves.
Samneric
Samneric (Sam and Eric) represent totally civilized and socialized
persons. As identical twins, they have always been a group, albeit the
smallest of groups, but a group nevertheless. They know no other
way than to submit to the collective identity and will. They are
initially devoted to rescue but easily overwhelmed by the ferocity of
tribe. They represent the well-intentioned members of general public
who play by the rules of whoever is in charge. They are easily
intimidated by Jack and abandon their fire-tending duties at his
command. Seeing Ralph's rage at the resultant loss of a rescue
opportunity, Samneric mock him once they are alone, despite the fact
that their desertion of duty caused his anger and the loss of possible
rescue. On a realistic, perhaps human, level, they may laugh to dispel
their guilt or because their childish perspective has already allowed
them to forget the loss they caused or because their priority is merely
to avoid punishment. On the symbolic level, however, laughter is a
totally social act.

After the horror of Simon's death, in which they participate, they

fear for their own lives because they have remained loyal to Ralph.
As Ralph's group plans to approach Jack's tribe, Samneric want to
paint themselves like tribe members, hoping for mercy through
assimilation. When the twins are captured by the tribe, Samneric
"protested out of the heart of civilization" but abandon their loyalty
to that civilization to avoid punishment, betraying Ralph out of
concern for their own welfare. Their return to civilization will be
fairly easy because they look only to appease whoever is in charge.

Roger
Roger represents the sadist, the individual who enjoys hurting
others. His evil motives are different from Jack's, who pursues
leadership and stature and enjoys the thrill of the hunt. Roger just
likes to hurt people. He is described in Chapter 1 as a boy "who kept
to himself with avoidance and secrecy." His secret is that he is, in
some ways, more evil than even Jack. All his life, Roger has been
conditioned to leash or mask his impulses. The "irresponsible
authority" of Jack's reign offers him the chance to unleash his innate
cruelty. Initially, in a mean-spirited prank, Roger throws rocks at the
unsuspecting littlun, Henry, but he throws them so that they miss,
surrounded as Henry is by "the protection of parents and school and
policeman and the law. Roger's arm was conditioned by . . .
civilization." Once he joins Jack's tribe, he has lost that conditioning
and eventually kills Piggy with one boulder, which was not intended
to miss.

SYMBOLS

The Conch Shell

Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start
of the novel and use it to summon the boys together after the crash
separates them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell becomes a
powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel. The shell
effectively governs the boys’ meetings, for the boy who holds the shell
holds the right to speak. In this regard, the shell is more than a
symbol—it is an actual vessel of political legitimacy and democratic
power. As the island civilization erodes and the boys descend into
savagery, the conch shell loses its power and influence among them.
Ralph clutches the shell desperately when he talks about his role in
murdering Simon. Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw
stones at him when he attempts to blow the conch in Jack’s camp.
The boulder that Roger rolls onto Piggy also crushes the conch shell,
signifying the demise of the civilized instinct among almost all the
boys on the island.
Piggy’s Glasses

Piggy is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his
glasses represent the power of science and intellectual endeavor in
society. This symbolic significance is clear from the start of the novel,
when the boys use the lenses from Piggy’s glasses to focus the
sunlight and start a fire. When Jack’s hunters raid Ralph’s camp
and steal the glasses, the savages effectively take the power to make
fire, leaving Ralph’s group helpless.

The Signal Fire

The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to
attract the notice of passing ships that might be able to rescue the
boys. As a result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys’
connection to civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that
the boys maintain the fire is a sign that they want to be rescued and
return to society. When the fire burns low or goes out, we realize that
the boys have lost sight of their desire to be rescued and have
accepted their savage lives on the island. The signal fire thus
functions as a kind of measurement of the strength of the civilized
instinct remaining on the island. Ironically, at the end of the novel, a
fire finally summons a ship to the island, but not the signal fire.
Instead, it is the fire of savagery—the forest fire Jack’s gang starts as
part of his quest to hunt and kill Ralph.

The Beast

The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stands for the
primal instinct of savagery that exists within all human beings. The
boys are afraid of the beast, but only Simon reaches the realization
that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them. As the
boys grow more savage, their belief in the beast grows stronger. By
the end of the novel, the boys are leaving it sacrifices and treating it
as a totemic god. The boys’ behavior is what brings the beast into
existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more real the beast
seems to become.

The Lord of the Flies

The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sow’s head that Jack
impales on a stake in the forest glade as an offering to the beast. This
complicated symbol becomes the most important image in the novel
when Simon confronts the sow’s head in the glade and it seems to
speak to him, telling him that evil lies within every human heart and
promising to have some “fun” with him. (This “fun” foreshadows
Simon’s death in the following chapter.) In this way, the Lord of the
Flies becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of
the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast
within each human being.

Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Roger

Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, and many of its characters

signify important ideas or themes. Ralph represents order,
leadership, and civilization. Piggy represents the scientific and
intellectual aspects of civilization. Jack represents unbridled
savagery and the desire for power. Simon represents natural human
goodness. Roger represents brutality and bloodlust at their most
extreme. To the extent that the boys’ society resembles a political
state, the littluns might be seen as the common people, while the
older boys represent the ruling classes and political leaders. The
relationships that develop between the older boys and the younger
ones emphasize the older boys’ connection to either the civilized or
the savage instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and Simon use their
power to protect the younger boys and advance the good of the
group; savage boys like Jack and Roger use their power to gratify
their own desires, treating the littler boys as objects for their own
amusement.

Setting

Lord of the Flies takes place on an unnamed, uninhabited tropical

island in the Pacific Ocean during a fictional world wide war around
the year 1950. The boys arrive on the island when an airplane that
was presumably evacuating them crashes. From the moment of their
arrival, the boys begin destroying the natural harmony of the island.
The scorched land where the airplane crashed, ripping up trees, is
described as a “scar.”

What Does the Ending Mean?

In the final pages of Lord of the Flies, Ralph runs through the
jungle fleeing both Jack and his pack of savage boys and the fire Jack
set in the on the mountain. Ralph emerges onto the beach and is
discovered by a British Naval officer who has come ashore after
seeing the burning island from his ship. Ironically, Ralph’s main
motivation throughout the entire novel has been maintaining a smoke
signal, yet Jack’s careless and murderous wildfire incites their rescue
from the island. Soon the rest of the boys join Ralph and tell the
officer about their ordeal. As they speak, the reality of what has
happened to them finally hits them, and several boys begin crying.
They are transformed from murderous savages back into scared
children. The quickness of the boys’ transformation suggests their
experience on the island has been a form of mass hysteria they
weren’t fully aware of as it was happening.

The officer seems unable to fully comprehend what the boys have
been through, preferring to believe they have been playing a game,
and expressing disappointment that British boys could revert to such
savagery. During much of the book, Piggy and Ralph wish for a
“grownup” figure to tell them what to do and how to keep order. But
the officer reminds us that while the boys have been trying to survive
and maintain civilization on the island, adults all over the world were
waging war for no discernible reason. The adult world waiting for
Ralph back home is just as savage as the island with Jack and his
tribe. The devastating realization for both Ralph and the reader
suggests that despite our best efforts to uphold order and civility,
humans are inherently prone to self-destruction. This ending suggests
that despite what we want to believe, the line between civilized order
and inherent human savagery is blurred.

Point of View

Golding employs a third-person omniscient narrator in Lord of the

Flies, meaning that the narrator speaks in a voice separate from that
of any of the characters and sometimes narrates what the characters
are thinking and feeling as well as what they’re doing. Most often the
narrator describes what the characters are doing and how they’re
interacting as seen from the outside. The narrator’s point of view is
sometimes that of an objective observer of all of the boys, as in the
scenes where they’re all meeting and interacting, but sometimes the
narrator will follow the point of view of one boy by himself. The
characters whose point of view we see most frequently are Ralph,
Jack, Simon, and Piggy. The narrator devotes the most time to
Ralph, describing not just his thoughts but his thought process—
“Then, at the moment of greatest passion and conviction, that curtain
flapped in his head and he forgot—what he had been driving at.” The
reader also g et a sense of Ralph’s home life in an extended reverie
where he remembers “when you went to bed there was a bowl of
cornflakes with sugar and cream.…Everything was alright;
everything was good-humored and friendly.”

The narrator reflects Jack’s internal thought the least out of all the
major characters, but still takes the reader inside his head, as after
he kills the so “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of
the knowledge that had come the them when they had closed in on
the struggling pig...” We also spend brief amounts of time inside the
heads of littluns in order to show that the impulses ruling the main
characters are universal and innate.

In utilizing a third person point of view, Golding also lets the

reader see action that none of the boys themselves witness, creating
dramatic irony, which is when a reader knows more than a character
does. The reader witnesses the scene of the paratrooper landing on
the island, so when the boys believe they see a looming beast, the
reader understands it’s actually a corpse animated by the wind.

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is an important technique in Lord of the Flies, and

Golding employs several instances of indirect foreshadowing
throughout the book. Nearly every plot event is foreshadowed in the
establishing chapters, creating a sense of inevitability to the events.

Piggy’s Death
Piggy’s Death is an important point in Lord of the Flies, and is
foreshadowed from the first time we see his character; however, the
exact nature of his death is an instance of false foreshadowing, as
Golding sets up the reader to believe Piggy will die from his physical
frailty, not violence. Piggy’s death signifies the end of Ralph’s fragile
troop, and a victory by the forces of violence and brutality over the
forces of wisdom, kindness, and civility. The death is foreshadowed in
the early pages, when Piggy tells Ralph he has asthma, can’t swim,
needs his glasses to see, and is sick from the fruit. “Sucks to your ass-
mar!” Ralph replies, foreshadowing the boys’ lack of concern about
Piggy’s physical vulnerability. When Jack breaks one of the lenses in
Piggy’s glasses, the foreshadowing of his fragility is repeated, and his
dependence on his glasses for survival. Later, he can’t catch his
breath and “blue shadows” creep around his mouth, suggesting he
will suffocate while the boys looks for the beast. That his death comes
through an act of violence, instead of his own physical condition,
defies the expectations set up by all the previous foreshadowing. At
the same time, the fact that the boys hunt pigs foreshadows the
violent nature of Piggy’s death, as when Jack says “If only I could get
a pig!”

The Boys’ Rescue

One source of tension throughout the novel is the question of
whether the boys will be rescued from the island, but several
instances of foreshadowing suggest the boys will eventually be
discovered. The anxiety about what will happen to them is
established early in the book, when Piggy repeats “nobody knows
where we are,” and says “the plane was shot down in flames… we
may be here a long time.” Shortly after, however, Ralph insists that
“there aren’t any unknown islands left… sooner or later, we shall be
rescued.” At this point, the question is whether there is any
civilization left to rescue them. Soon, though, a ship passes, indicating
that the world beyond the island still exists. The arrival of the
paratrooper also links the island to the outside world. Simon alludes
to his faith that the boys will make it home, though his wording – “I
just think you’ll get back all right” – omits himself from the
reassurance, suggesting he has a presentiment of his own death.
When the boys are finally discovered, they are on the brink of
destroying Ralph and the island, so although it has been
foreshadowed, their rescue still comes as a surprise.